Chapter 70

One highest priority.

That was the tentative alteration I eventually finalized for my Essence development priorities for the foreseeable future.

One priority from which all others would derive their importance.

Forming the [Vitality] Aspect.

Everything else was either a step toward it, a foundation supporting it, a requirement imposed by my duties, or an obstacle to be postponed until after I attained it.

It was that simple once I allowed myself to think everything through with [Clarity].

Unfortunately, the first "optimal" step toward forming the [Vitality] Aspect was itself forming another Aspect.

The [Mastery] Mastery.

And forming a new Aspect was never simple.

There existed no exact sequence of [Exertion]s that would allow me to form the [Mastery] Aspect after repeating it a predetermined number of times.

No special [Comprehension] that would cause it to manifest if grasped perfectly.

No specific threshold of [Knowledge] beyond which my Essence would inevitably acknowledge [Mastery] as part of my Path.

All I could do was accumulate [Comprehension] of the concept embodied by [Mastery] while pursuing what it represented with sufficient [Clarity] to know what I was doing and sufficient [Awareness] to recognize where my competence ended.

Then from there, I would just have to continue.

Without hurry.

Because haste would neither bring me closer to forming the [Mastery] Aspect nor the [Vitality] Aspect.

Haste would only make me repeat the same mistakes faster.

I knew that.

Xafsa had made certain I knew that.

And still, the [Knowledge] that an impermanent solution to my overdevelopment disorder potentially awaited me the day I formed the [Vitality] Aspect made accepting the indeterminate nature of forming [Mastery] thoroughly aggravating.

But aggravation did not alter reality.

Just like no amount of being aggravated at my overdevelopment disaster would solve it.

So while I intended to drastically adjust my [Cultivation] routine toward forming the [Mastery] Aspect, dedicating every fitting duty, study period, correction, procedure, and independent practice to it...

I also intended to rebalance everything else so I could begin to apply whatever Xafsa had already told me about forming the [Vitality] Aspect.

Because while [Mastery] was the first step...

It wasn't an absolute prerequisite to commencing the next one.

Only a near requirement.

A distinction I fully intended to exploit.

As for how one was meant to form the [Vitality] Aspect?

From what little Xafsa had shared with me, the process began with what the Pulse referred to as the [Vitality] conceptualization phase.

A phase I could allegedly reluctantly commence without the support of the [Mastery] Aspect.

I would just be that much less efficient.

Still...

My [Cultivation] Aspect could accommodate many of the individual practices involved.

My [Clarity] Aspect could preserve the distinction between principles.

My [Harmony] Aspect could bring them together.

My [Comprehension] Aspect could integrate them into broader structures of [Knowledge]...

The only genuine issue was that my [Cultivation] Aspect did not embody the flawless accuracy required to handle every part simultaneously.

It could not ensure that ten thousand fragments of [Life] [Knowledge] were each understood with the same precision.

It could not provide the practiced certainty to merge principles drawn from anatomy, healing, adaptation, metabolism, Essence interaction, growth, decay, recovery, and countless other fields without introducing a single foundational error.

It did not grant the degree of [Mastery] required.

Hence why commencing before forming that Aspect was considered inefficient.

Which mattered.

Because during the [Vitality] conceptualization phase, I only had one task.

Conceptualize [Vitality].

Not merely learn how others defined it.

Not memorize the biological processes associated with it.

Not compile every phenomenon that demonstrated its existence.

I had to conceptualize the idea itself.

Its endless intricacies.

Its countless expressions.

Its inextricable interweaving with [Life] as a conceptual form of [Energy].

The hypothetical capacity through which [Life] moved.

Persisted.

Recovered.

Adapted.

Reproduced.

Resisted its own cessation.

The distinction separating a living structure that merely continued existing from one that possessed the force to impose its continued existence upon reality.

That was [Vitality].

Approximately.

Any more definitive conclusion would have been presumptuous.

And the reason Xafsa wished for me to wait until I formed the [Mastery] Aspect was already obvious from there.

The [Vitality] conceptualization phase ostensibly amounted to creating the nascent form of the actual concept I would later use to form my [Vitality] Aspect.

Not someone else's concept of [Vitality].

Mine.

A proto-concept rooted deeply enough within my Path that my Essence could eventually recognize it as an intrinsic part of my existence.

I had asked Xafsa why I couldn't simply copy the concept of someone who had already formed the [Vitality] Aspect.

It told me to find the answer myself.

I ultimately hadn't bothered.

Perhaps copying another's concept would create incompatibilities.

Perhaps an Aspect formed from another's understanding could never truly belong to one's Path.

Perhaps the conceptual foundation would remain too shallow to sustain formation.

Perhaps attempting to recreate an existing [Vitality] Aspect without sharing the existence that produced it was fundamentally impossible.

There were many prospective answers.

None presently mattered.

If the Pulse Of Eternity, of all organizations, told me this was how the [Vitality] Aspect was to be formed...

Then this was how the [Vitality] Aspect was to be formed.

I could investigate the reason later.

After succeeding and rising through the ranks

Ultimately, without [Mastery] assisting the seemingly complete synergy formed by my [Clarity], [Harmony], [Will], [Comprehension], [Awareness], [Cultivation], [Ambition], and even [Purity] Aspects, assembling even the most nascent version of my own [Vitality] concept was bound to become a gargantuan endeavor.

Only my [Ambition] Aspect had led Xafsa to reason that I might still accomplish it prematurely through what essentially amounted to brute-forcing my way through every deficiency that [Mastery] would otherwise allow me to steadily resolve.

And again...

Xafsa probably expected doing it that way to take years if not decades.

I wasn't going to have any of that.

At first glance, my situation appeared to be another question of [Harmony] and [Balance].

How much of my Essence development quota should I dedicate to furthering my [Mastery] of [Life]?

How much should I invest into [Vitality] conceptualization?

Which one would provide the greatest return?

Which would bring me closer to the final objective faster without rendering the other path inefficient?

All initially valid questions.

But incomplete ones nonetheless.

Because I had something more.

I had my Origin Aspect.

From the way Xafsa and the Pulse had evaluated me, I had long understood that [Guided] was mostly perceived as some unusual variety of learning Aspect.

A means through which I received corrections.

An intuitive indication of where to direct my attention.

A persistent source of instruction that enabled me to optimize my [Knowledge] acquisition and [Comprehension], improve my practical competence, and avoid errors others would require experience to recognize.

Useful.

Exceptional, even.

But still only one supporting part of my Path.

They believed the rest mostly depended on me.

My [Will].

My [Clarity].

My [Comprehension].

My choices, practices, and capacity to endure the consequences of them.

I couldn't fault them for their incomprehension.

No one back in the Red Sand Sector had ever appeared to truly understand how deeply [Guided] was involved with every part of my existence either, other than maybe Stavros, after all.

How could they?

They observed what I did.

They could not perceive every direction that preceded every action.

Every warning that prevented a mistake.

Every correction made before an error fully manifested.

Every subtle compulsion that turned my attention toward a detail I would have otherwise missed.

Every moment in which the distinction between what I decided and what [Guided] directed me to decide ceased to have any meaning.

They saw me.

They saw [Guided] assisting me.

They did not understand that I was neither two wholly separate things nor one unified thing.

And it wasn't as though I had demonstrated the full extent of what my Origin Aspect could enable since arriving within the Everwell Sector.

For more than three months already, I had primarily relegated it to passive guidance.

Allowing it to direct my studies.

Correct my practical actions.

Refine how I furthered my [Mastery] and [Comprehension] of [Life] through my [Cultivation].

Nothing that should have appeared impossible to the likes of an organization on the level of the Pulse Of Eternity.

Nothing remotely comparable to the experiments I had once carried out in pursuit of [Guided] Essence [Cultivation].

Oh well.

In the end, their incomplete understanding had worked in my favor, hadn't it?

No one had accounted for everything I could actually do.

So after [Focus]ing on the best Path forward...

The answer became evident.

I would call upon [Guided] to an abusive extent.

Then I would use my [Ambition] and [Will] to forcefully recall every piece of [Life] [Knowledge] and every fragment of pseudo-[Mastery] of [Life] I had ever acquired, practiced, or observed.

All at once.

And I would immediately begin assembling my proto-concept of [Vitality] through the most optimized [Comprehension] I could both attain and sustain.

From there...

I would read.

Book after book.

Field after field.

Species after species.

I would take every new piece of [Life] [Knowledge] I encountered and attempt to assimilate it into the proto-concept.

Whatever fit would remain.

Whatever conflicted would expose either a deficiency in the new [Knowledge], an error in my [Comprehension], or a weakness in my [Vitality] proto-concept itself.

Whatever proved irrelevant would be discarded.

An elimination process enacted across the whole field of [Life] that I had access to.

Until enough survived.

Until the countless surviving parts aligned.

Until they formed something my Essence could recognize.

Crude.

Somewhat absurd.

Brute-forced by definition

But possible.

And following that line of thought...

Was anything preventing me from beginning right there and then?

My duties wouldn't resume for hours.

My physical condition was perfect.

My energy reserves were full.

My overdevelopment safety margin was extensive enough to permit worry-free intensive [Cultivation].

And I was already within the Aspirant repository floors, surrounded by more [Life] [Knowledge] than I could reasonably exhaust in decades.

So... no, there was nothing stopping me.

My [Ambition] flaring faintly, I found a secluded alcove distant from the busier reading and research spaces, entered it, and closed a thin partition behind me to indicate it was occupied.

Welcomed by silence, I moved one of the cushions on top of the table, sat on it, folded my legs beneath me, laid my hands upon my thighs, and communed with my Essence.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

I ascertained the magnitude of my safety margin by counting the density events coursing through my Essence and inspecting my every Aspect for anomalies, then projected how much Essence development I could accommodate before approaching various relative thresholds.

My last worries gone, I stopped communing with my Essence...

Then [Will]ed myself into absolute [Clarity].

Every irrelevant thought vanished.

My surroundings lost all importance.

The distant movements throughout the repository floors, the vibrations travelling through the floor, the entities passing beyond the alcove partition...

Gone.

I shifted the remaining contents of my mind into distinct states of [Harmony].

Memories separated from conclusions.

Observations from interpretations.

Known anatomy from inferred function.

General principles from species-specific expressions.

Practical competence from theoretical [Knowledge].

Then I compressed my [Awareness].

The repository vanished first.

Then the alcove.

Then the air surrounding my skin, fluctuating under the relentless pull and push of my [Cultovation] [Cycle].

Until my own body became the sole existence retained within it.

My heart.

My blood.

My lungs.

My nerves.

My muscles.

My bones.

My organs.

My skin.

My wings.

My [Body].

[Life].

I called upon my [Comprehension] of all of it.

Then upon my shallow [Comprehension] of [Vitality] that I had already developed through my idle thoughts since Xafsa first described the conceptualization phase to me.

Movement.

Persistence.

Recovery.

Adaptive force.

The energy through which [Life] sustained and asserted itself.

Except...

No.

It was much too simple.

Too blatant.

The conclusions I reached so easily could not possibly serve as the foundation of an Aspect as intricate as [Vitality].

And the foundation would define everything that followed.

One early error would distort every later assimilation.

One false premise would force countless true fragments of [Knowledge] into the wrong arrangement.

So I shattered it.

Every connection I had established.

Every clean distinction.

Every premature conclusion.

I plunged all of it back into [Chaos].

Then, right there...

I [Will]ed for [Guided] to make me remember.

Everything.

Every piece of [Life] [Knowledge] I had ever acquired.

Every biological process I had observed.

Every injury I had treated.

Every correction Xafsa had given me.

Every practice through which I had attained even the slightest pseudo-[Mastery] over any living structure.

[Guided] answered.

Immediately.

Memories surged.

Three months spent as a trial Aspirant unfolded procedurally through my mind.

Patient after patient.

Anatomy after anatomy.

Structures whose functions depended upon blood.

Sap.

Gel.

Crystalline filaments.

Distributed fluids.

Concentrated energy.

Organs localized within flesh.

Organs spread throughout entire bodies.

Entities whose cognition resided in brains.

Networks.

Cores.

Colonies of semi-independent living structures.

But those three months were only the surface.

[Guided] reached deeper.

Years of [Knowledge].

Years of experiments.

Years of observations made upon my own body.

My first crude [Cycle].

Pulling.

Holding.

Pushing.

Expelling.

The gradual transition from breathing as an uncontrollable necessity to understanding how air passed into my lungs, crossed into my blood, and travelled to every living tissue within me.

The beat of my heart.

The pressure of each contraction.

The branching vessels through which blood distributed air, nutrients, heat, energy, and everything else my cells required to persist.

The return flow.

The removal of what had already been expended.

Digestion.

Absorption.

The transformation of nutrients into substances my body could use.

My liver's filtration.

My kidneys' separation.

The balance of water, salts, heat, acidity, and countless minute variables whose slightest deviation could weaken or kill me.

Nerves transmitting intention into movement.

Sensation returning into perception.

Muscles contracting through ordered chains that began from chemical exchanges too small for my eyes to witness.

Bones bearing force.

Joints distributing it.

Tendons transferring it.

Skin preserving the internal environment upon which everything else depended.

My wings.

Their roots.

Their crystalline structures.

Their nature as Essence externalization interwoven through their thin iridescent surface.

The way injury to them was simultaneously physical and something more.

Growth.

Cell division.

Tissue differentiation.

The changing ratios through which my infant body had become larger, stronger, denser, more capable of containing energy.

Healing.

Blood clotting.

Inflammation.

Damaged tissues dismantled and replaced.

Wounds closing through natural repair.

How my [Will] forced severed structures to reconnect.

How [Guided] identified how my every vessel, nerve, muscle strand, and tissue layer was meant to align.

The distinction between repair and regeneration.

The danger of restoring form without function.

The danger of accelerating recovery beyond what surrounding structures could sustain.

The immune reactions through which my body distinguished itself from intrusion.

The failures through which it attacked what ought to have belonged.

Poison.

Disease.

Infection.

Starvation.

Dehydration.

Asphyxia.

Cold.

Heat.

Exhaustion.

Every threat and every answer [Life] could produce against them.

Then came [Tempering].

Thousands of experiments imposed upon my own body during my quest to synthesize the [Cultivation] Aspect.

Restricting air until every part of me strained to preserve consciousness.

Manipulating respiration.

Forcing my lungs to function under increasingly hostile conditions.

Altering circulation.

Redirecting blood.

Maintaining nourishment to critical tissues while others endured deprivation.

Driving my heart harder.

Slowing it.

Holding its rhythm through my sole [Will] when natural regulation faltered.

Inducing muscular strain and repairing the resulting micro-tears.

Weakening tissues to observe how they recovered stronger.

Subjecting nerves to pain, numbness, pressure, and interruption.

Testing the limits of balance.

Temperature.

Nutrition.

Energy.

Pushing my biological system until its function began to degrade, then sustaining it at that boundary long enough to learn how it adapted.

Embryonic breathing.

Extracting what I required without relying wholly upon my lungs.

Sustaining my physical vessel through a [Cycle] that touched every part of it.

Understanding that no living function existed alone.

Respiration supported circulation.

Circulation supported every tissue.

Nutrient distribution supplied both.

Nerves coordinated movement.

Movement altered demand.

Demand altered breathing, heart rate, heat, and energy expenditure.

Damage triggered repair.

Repair consumed resources.

Insufficient resources transformed recovery into further deterioration.

Everything was connected.

Everything affected everything.

And [Guided] made me behold it all.

This immensity of [Knowledge] descended upon my mind and first impacted my [Clarity], which allowed me to hold steadfast.

My [Harmony] then strained to keep every fragment distinct while allowing each relevant connection to manifest.

After that, my [Comprehension] expanded in every direction, attempting to grasp not merely the individual [Truth]s, but what existed between them.

What united them...

What separated the mere processes of [Life] from the [Vitality] flowing through those processes...

The strain felt...

Familiar.

Intimately so.

My energy began draining beneath the sustained weight of my [Will].

Not with the catastrophic speed of [Will]ing false memories of [Guided]'s origination into existence.

But the fundamental sensation was the same.

The same demand to sustain something my mind and body had no reasonable capacity to contain.

The same pressure declaring that the undertaking exceeded me.

The same force I recognized having to battle against whenever I pushed against impossibility.

Only...

More than a year had passed since I had last crossed that boundary.

A year largely devoted to exhaustion resistance [Cultivation].

A year of forcing my body and mind to continue functioning as their energy diminished.

A year of refining how efficiently I extracted, contained, distributed, and [Cycle]d energy throughout my physical vessel.

And the results were undeniable.

The depth of energy presently coursing through my [Cultivation] [Cycle] was multiple times what it had once been.

Multiple times the force available to my [Will].

Multiple times what I needed to sustain the near impossible before my [Ambition] became the sole thing holding my [Will] aloft.

And it could have been multiple times that again.

Had I not been forced to restrain myself.

Had I not spent so much of the previous year maintaining quotas.

Interrupting [Cultivation]s.

Abandoning opportunities.

Waiting.

Idling.

Observing worthless scenery that repeated endlessly without novelty or any [Insight]s to extract from them.

Not that I would have dared to reach for those [Insight]s anyhow.

As I was doing everything in my power to keep my Essence from developing as quickly as my Path demanded.

Because of my overdevelopment disorder.

The thought manifested.

Then vanished within the same second.

Irrelevant.

All that remained was the immensity of [Knowledge] mixing and conflicting with my [Comprehension] of [Life].

Exactly as intended.

Every principle pushed against another.

Growth conflicted with preservation.

Adaptation with stability.

Regeneration with controlled structure.

Energy conservation with the expenditure required to survive.

The individual with the living systems upon which it depended.

A body could preserve itself by sacrificing parts of itself.

A cell could die to sustain the organism.

An organism could consume another to continue living.

Uncontrolled growth produced death.

Unrestrained healing could destroy function.

Adaptation could become corruption.

Persistence could require change.

Change could threaten identity.

[Life] was not [Vitality].

[Energy] was not [Vitality].

Health was not [Vitality].

Survival was not [Vitality].

And yet [Vitality] touched all of them.

No single conclusion survived intact.

That was what I wanted.

The weight of it all.

The seeming impossibility of truly grasping every contradiction, accompanied by the factual certainty that I had to.

This was where I felt most comfortable.

Not when the answer was obvious.

Not when my Path forward was a clear succession of effortless quests for [Comprehension] and [Mastery] amidst a regulated [Cultivation] routine.

Here.

At the boundary where the undertaking became too large.

Where every reasonable evaluation declared that I lacked the time, [Knowledge], experience, or capacity required.

Where continuing transformed from a question of prudence into one of sheer [Will].

Always pushing.

Always seeking my limits.

Then pushing against it until my limits yielded, I slightly broke, or I uncovered what had falsely made it appear absolute.

Reveling in the act of challenging bounds others would never dare approach.

This was me.

This was my Path.

And this...

This was exactly what my overdevelopment disorder had denied me.

The realization ignited something.

A spark of [Will] I had spent more than two years smothering beneath careful calculations, safety margins, quotas, and restraint.

My [Clarity] heightened in answer.

The tide of [Life] [Knowledge] sharpened.

Every fragment became more distinct.

Every contradiction more exact.

Every missing connection more obvious.

Which only made me understand more clearly what had been taken from me.

How much more I could have accomplished.

How many more impossible undertakings I could have attempted.

How much further my Path could have advanced had I not been required to stop every time my Essence began approaching what it was naturally capable of sustaining.

My [Clarity] heightened again.

And with it...

I returned to the same conclusion.

I hated it.

Not disliked it.

Not resented it as an unfortunate constraint.

Not accepted it as another difficulty to overcome or an abstract form of [Temperance] [Cultivation].

I loathed my overdevelopment disorder.

I loathed every quota it imposed.

Every period of forced idleness.

Every [Cultivation] I had brought to the edge of breakthrough, only to abandon it because succeeding risked pushing my Essence too far.

Every [Insight] I refused to pursue.

Every question I left unanswered.

Every opportunity I watched pass.

Every time I convinced myself that patience was efficient.

That slowing down was simply another optimization.

That restraint could be transformed into [Cultivation].

That there was [Knowledge] to acquire even while doing nothing.

Excuses.

Useful excuses.

Necessary excuses.

Excuses that had kept me alive.

But excuses nonetheless.

Because the actual reason was simpler.

I had been afraid.

Not of pain.

Not of injury.

Not even of death in the ordinary sense.

I had been afraid of pushing too far and triggering another Essence mutation.

Of surviving only for my body to be altered into something that no amount of Essence development could fix, like I once did with [Will] in the wake of Volow's disaster.

Of my Essence finding a solution to its own overdevelopment that destroyed the Path I had carefully designed to allow me to reach summits no one else dared to even think about.

And worse, I had now learned that a Path-warping or crippling Essence mutation wasn't even the worst prospective end one could be afflicted with in the wake of one's Essence entering a state of volatility.

My Essence could cease to maintain the stable boundaries defining my existence.

My development could be warped.

I could incur my first case of Essence corruption through my own Essence being corrupted into something else.

So I had never dared to approach the threshold of my overdevelopment disorder again, and instead slowed down.

Now, however...

With the first possibility of escaping those constraints finally within my figurative sight, my fears retreated like [Darkness] exposed to [Light], and I attained a [Clarity] that allowed me to instantly comprehend how profoundly I had come to despise my overdevelopment disorder and the constraints it brought to my Path.

Something within my Essence gave.

A pressure that had been accumulating so gradually I hadn't noticed its existence abruptly shifted.

Then surged.

I felt my [Clarity] Aspect tremble without even being in communion with my Essence.

I felt its place within my Essence distorted, deepened, and began drawing everything associated with it inward.

[Clarity].

The capacity to separate truth from noise.

Intent from impulse.

Reality from the excuses used to endure it.

It obviously entered an advancement disorder state.

I didn't care.

My [Clarity] only heightened further.

And like a ripple breaking a stalemate, new [Comprehension]s surged through me.

Not of [Life].

Not of [Vitality].

Of myself.

My restraint.

My [Ambition].

The relation between fear and prudence.

The distinction between accepting a limitation and allowing it to define the limits of my Path.

The countless ways I had altered my thoughts so I could endure doing less than I was capable of.

They submerged me alongside the tide of biological [Knowledge].

Two immensities.

One directed outward, toward [Life].

One inward, toward everything I had refused to acknowledge.

Neither broke my [Cultivation].

I grasped them.

Separated them.

Placed them into [Harmony].

Allowed each [Comprehension] to settle where it belonged without permitting it to disrupt the process of assembling my proto-concept of [Vitality] I had yet to begin.

Then I felt something else in my Essence give.

My entire effort weakened.

The countless memories [Guided] held before me dulled.

Connections that had been perfectly distinct blurred at their edges.

My [Harmony] faltered.

My [Will] manifestation diminished as though some unseen opening had begun swallowing the energy sustaining it.

My first attempt at beginning to assemble my [Vitality] proto-concept threatened to collapse before it had acquired even the slightest tangible [Insight].

No.

I refused.

I held it.

This was only the first session.

I had barely started.

I had yet to test a single new piece of [Knowledge].

I had yet to eliminate a single false connection.

I had yet to identify even one principle that unquestionably belonged at the foundation of my [Vitality].

I had yet to ignite my [Ambition].

I forged onward.

And whatever was happening within my Essence...

I would not allow a single sliver of it to escape me either.

Without releasing the wave of [Life] [Knowledge], I slipped into true communion.

My Essence opened around me.

Every eddy.

Every surge.

Every deepening pressure and twisting and warping produced by [Clarity]'s advancement disorder state.

Every change brought by whatever had just weakened my effort.

I beheld it all while my [Awareness] remained compressed within my physical vessel, while my [Harmony] continued arranging the impossible volume of memories, while my [Comprehension] continued searching for the first true fragment of [Vitality].

It was so much.

Too much.

It was perfect.

My energy fell.

My [Will] strained.

The pressure rose.

Then, before I fully cognized crossing the threshold...

My [Ambition] flared.

Blazing.

Frenzied.

Boundless.

It caught the collapsing weight of my [Will] and hurled it upward.

My [Clarity] erupted.

Every memory sharpened beyond its original perception.

Every biological process unfolded through all its causes and consequences.

Every motion and sign occurring within my Essence became distinct.

My own body opened before my [Awareness], as though there existed no difference between tissue, energy, thought, and existence.

I beheld everything.

The [Knowledge].

The contradictions.

The advancement.

The danger.

My Path.

My overdevelopment safety margin hadn't vanished.

No risk had ceased to exist.

No constraint had yet been broken.

But for the first time in more than a year, none of them stood between me and how far I intended to strive.

This...

This was how it should be.